Dr.Saroja Vaidyanathan

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Saroja Vaidyanathan (née Dharmarajan) was born in Bellary, Karnataka, on 19 September 1937. Vaidyanathan's parents were both authors; her mother Kanakam Dharmarajan was a writer of detective fiction in Tamil.[3]

She received her initial training in Bharatanatyam at the Saraswati Gana Nilayam in Chennai and later studied under guru Kattumannar Muthukumaran Pillai of Thanjavur. She also studied Carnatic music under Professor P. Sambamoorthy at Madras University and had a D.Litt in dance from the Indira Kala Sangeet Vishwavidyalaya, Khairagarh.[4]

Vaidyanathan gave up dancing after her marriage, following conservative and adverse reactions to her performing in public venues and took instead to teaching children dance at home. Following her husband's transfer to Delhi in 1972, she established the Ganesa Natyalaya there in 1974. She was monetarily supported by well wishers and sponsors and the building for the Natyalaya was built at the Qutab Institutional Area in 1988. Besides the dance itself, students at the Ganesa Natyalaya are also taught Tamil, Hindi, and Carnatic vocal music to give them a holistic understanding of Bharatanatyam.[5]

Vaidyanathan was a prolific choreographer and had to her credit ten full-length ballets and nearly two thousand individual Bharatanatyam pieces.[5] She undertook a cultural tour of South East Asia in 2002, accompanying Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to the ASEAN Summit in 2002.[1] She had also published her renditions of Subramania Bharati's songs and poems and set some of her works to dance.[1][6]